Bride at Bay Hospital

by Meredith Webber

  That was the little speech he’d prepared before he’d seen her—in fact, he’d prepared it yesterday when Sally had told him the meeting was on today’s agenda.

  Now he sat back and waited.

  And waited.

  But when Meg finally spoke, it wasn’t about issues and they were right back to personal again.

  ‘Why did you come back?’

  He drew in air—hoping she wouldn’t notice his chest expanding and contracting—because although it had all seemed so simple, so practical, when the idea had been mooted, now emotional garbage kept coming up and he wondered if perhaps subconsciously…

  ‘I thought we were discussing the hospital.’

  The stilted words seemed to make things worse, not better, and Sam gave up all pretence, shrugged his shoulders, walked past Meg to shut the office door, then turned back to face her.

  ‘It was to do with Mum, or at least I thought it was, but now I’m back, I wonder if I didn’t have to come anyway, if only to…’

  He ran his hands through his hair, aware it was becoming a habit he’d never had before.

  ‘Ground myself sounds trite and stupid, but I can’t think of any other way to say it. You accused me the other day of not thinking through my return, and that’s not right. I had thought it through! But that was back when Mum was alive and it was her dream, not only to come back here but to do some good here. Things worked out that she got some money, quite a lot of money, and she wanted to build a private hospital—I guess if I’d been a teacher she’d have built a school. So, because she’d left the Bay originally because of me and because I owed her in more ways than I can ever tell you, I thought it through and reckoned I could do it.’

  ‘And then she died?’ Meg said quietly, and for the first time in weeks Sam felt a lump of sorrow harden in his throat, killing any chance of answering.

  So he nodded, but he turned away so Meg wouldn’t see his weakness, going back behind his desk and picking up Sally’s typed agenda.

  ‘Before I’d finished the administration course I was doing. Before she could get here!’

  Another pause, while Meg searched for words that might ease just a little of his pain, but before she found them, Sam spoke again.

  ‘Which might be why the whole experience has thrown me for a loop,’ he managed gruffly. ‘Made me vulnerable, I suppose, to the past.’

  He looked at her and waved the sheet of paper he still held in his hand.

  ‘Vulnerable doesn’t sit well with me, Meg,’ he said. Understatement of the year! ‘I pride myself on being in control.’

  In control—two words and they reminded Meg of what had puzzled her in Sam’s explanation of their break-up. He’d been in control—cutting her out of his life with one swift stroke—controlling the break to the extent she hadn’t been able to question it—hadn’t been able to ask for an explanation.

  Why hadn’t he talked to her about it? That was the question she wanted—needed—to ask.

  But not now, when she was so tired and her heart was still aching for the tiny babies flown away that morning.

  Not now when she was, to use Sam’s unexpected word, so vulnerable.

  Sam was sitting down again—behind his desk—agenda in hand.

  ‘Ready now?’ he said, and she knew the time for questioning had passed.

  ‘I guess so,’ she agreed, though she wondered if it would be possible to behave normally when the air between them hummed like the wind through high-voltage lines.

  ‘The hospital is running well,’ she began, when it became obvious Sam wasn’t going to open proceedings. ‘Though with the flu that’s been going around we’ve been short-staffed, which meant having to transfer two elderly patients to the city.’

  ‘Why elderly patients in particular?’ Sam asked, and Meg relaxed. Not entirely, but enough so she could ignore all the Sam-Meg stuff happening inside her while she discussed work-related matters.

  ‘We closed a ward. Well, not a ward in the way you think of a ward, but a two-bedded room. You’ll have realised that the kids’ ward is the only real ward-type room in the hospital. All the other rooms are singles or doubles, configured in such a way we can have more or fewer patients under each umbrella. So we might have six postsurgical patients one week and only three medical patients, or vice-versa if we haven’t had a visiting surgeon for a week. With the absenteeism, we just didn’t have the staff to cope with the two elderly patients who were here waiting for accommodation in a nursing home. They’re not high-level care, but they do need help, and they really didn’t mind being transferred for a week. In fact, I think they looked on it as a pleasant change.’

  ‘Don’t regulations mean you can’t have patients here indefinitely, even if they are awaiting placement somewhere else?’

  Sam’s question, more an administrative than a medical one, surprised Meg, although she didn’t know why. He’d always been inquisitive, asking why and how and wherefore. No doubt he knew the hospital regulations as well as she did, possibly better if he’d done an administration course.

  ‘Well, they do,’ she admitted. ‘They limit the number of nights that a patient can stay but, of course, now these two have been away for a week, we can start again.’

  She tried a smile and thought he was trying hard not to smile back at her.

  ‘Bending the rules, Sister Anstey?’ he asked, allowing a little bit of the smile to escape around the edges of his mouth.

  ‘It’s impossible not to!’ Meg snapped, more annoyed by her reaction to that faint smile than by his question. But at least she could get rid of some pent-up emotion, because she did think the regulations were all wrong.

  ‘What are we supposed to do with elderly people who have nowhere to go and no family to turn to? Put them out on the street? Give them a refrigerator carton and supermarket trolley to set them up for their new life?’

  He smiled properly now.

  ‘That’d be the least we could do,’ he agreed. ‘And I’m not criticising you for keeping these people here, just wondering if there’s something we can do to alleviate the problem in the future. Are there too few places in nursing homes? I would have thought an area like the Bay, where people have been coming to retire for generations, would be well equipped with retirement villages, hostels and nursing homes.’

  ‘It is,’ Meg said, and sighed. ‘There are more of the damn things than you can poke a stick at—but nowadays there are entry fees, or you have to buy your place. How are people who’ve never owned their own homes going to pay for a bed in a nursing home?’

  ‘But means-tested government subsidies exist—surely they’re available for those people,’ Sam protested.

  ‘Of course, but there’s a waiting list, and in the meantime the privately owned nursing homes and hostels can fill their beds with fee-paying clients, so why bother taking someone off the subsidy list?’

  Darn it all—she’d got all hot and bothered again, just when she was trying to be cool and sensible. And Sam had read her feelings easily, for he was smiling once again.

  ‘I’m glad you haven’t lost your fire, Megan,’ he said. ‘It is, and always has been, one of the most attractive things about you.’

  He’d meant it as a compliment, and Meg knew it, but somehow in her head it got twisted up with what he’d had the hide to say earlier—about how terrible she looked.

  ‘Well, that’s just great,’ she snapped at him. ‘You might look awful, Meg, but at least you’re fiery!’

  ‘You know damn well I didn’t mean it that way, Megan!’ Sam glowered at her, jolted out of what had been becoming a dangerous complacency. ‘You just looked tired.’

  ‘Well, you weren’t afraid of saying exactly what you thought when I came in,’ Meg reminded him. ‘So why should I imagine you’re handing out compliments now?’

  Sam held up both hands in surrender, but before Meg could speak again, Bill tapped on the door, then opened it and popped his head in.

  ‘Do come in, Bill, and res
cue me before she kills me,’ Sam told him.

  ‘You’ll need more than Bill for protection,’ Meg warned, but she stood up and moved her chair, making room for Bill to join them at the meeting.

  But before they could begin again, Sally poked her head around the door.

  ‘Sorry, Meg, but there’s an ambulance just come in with a couple of car accident victims so the doctors on duty are flat out, and now we’ve had a call that there’s been a logging accident over on the island. A helicopter’s on the way to pick you up.’

  ‘Pick you up?’ Sam repeated, looking towards Meg who had stood up, excused herself and moved towards the door as if there was nothing strange in the statement.

  ‘I’m a trained paramedic,’ she said briefly, and continued on her way.

  ‘But if a doctor’s available…’ Sam began, following her out the door and along the corridor. ‘I don’t mean to diminish your ability, but surely if there’s one available—’

  ‘You want to come?’ she asked, turning towards him. ‘Feel free! Four hands are always better than two and, yes, if a doctor is available, he or she will usually go.’

  ‘So you’ll go anyway? Even if I’m available?’

  Meg continued walking towards the back of the hospital, though she did turn her head and give him a brief glance.

  ‘What do I really know about you, Sam? You’re acting super, but a lot of supers don’t do hands-on medicine. Have you had recent A and E experience? Have you done helicopter rescues? For all I know, you’ve been administrating or treating geriatrics or doing anaesthetic work since you finished training. Why would I, or Sally, for that matter, think you’d want to do a rescue flight?’

  ‘You could have asked,’ he snapped, glaring down at her, mainly because she was right—she didn’t know what experience he had. What he did know was that having inexperienced or untrained staff on rescue flights could often not so much jeopardise the rescue but slow it down.

  ‘I’m paramedic trained,’ he said. ‘I’ve recent experience and, as you said, four hands might be better than two.’

  The helicopter was waiting for them outside, Simon, the pilot, standing at the door.

  ‘We can land close by,’ he said, handing them overalls to pull on over their clothes. ‘Ten-minute flight—I’ll fill you in on what I know once we’re in the air.’

  They climbed into the little aircraft and put on the helmets that held the communication equipment they would need to hear and speak.

  ‘There were three men cutting old-growth timber at the top end of the island. They had the chains wrapped around one log ready to drag it out but it was too long or unwieldy, so one of the blokes was cutting it in half when the chainsaw hit the chain and flew out of his hand, cutting his arm. The other bloke reaches out to grab the chainsaw and loses half his hand. The third man gets them both into his ute, thinking he’ll drive them out, and in his panic tips the thing over.’

  ‘So who contacted you?’ Meg asked.

  ‘The fellow with the injured hand. Used his mobile to dial triple zero. He thinks the driver must have knocked his head and is unconscious and he thinks the other bloke is dead, but as they’re all jammed into the front seat of a ute that’s upside down by the side of a timber track, who knows?’

  Sam felt his stomach squirm at the thought of what lay ahead, but the pilot was telling them to keep a lookout for a clearing in the trees that would denote a timber track.

  ‘He said they had a cleared camp,’ Simon added, then he turned the chopper into a low swoop and Sam saw the camp below them. The men had chosen well, right beside one of the beautiful blue fresh-water lakes for which the island was famous. And a nice sandy beach on which the helicopter could land.

  ‘We’ll just have to follow the track. The guy said they weren’t far from camp. The girl who took the call on triple zero is still talking to him. I’ve just called in that we’re down and on our way.’

  The pilot was unloading gear as he spoke, and Sam picked up the biggest of the backpacks, frowning as he saw Meg shoulder one not much smaller, wondering just how often she did this kind of work.

  With Simon carrying the third pack, they walked swiftly down the track that led out of the camp, Simon, calling out from time to time, hoping, once other tracks started to diverge, to get a direction from a voice.

  Hoping they were in time…

  CHAPTER SIX

  ‘HE SAID main track,’ Simon told them, as they hesitated once again, then a faint hail from just around the corner told them he was right.

  They ran now, knowing they were close, and found the battered old four-wheel-drive vehicle upside down below the level of the track. The cause of the accident was obvious, the sandy road having given way on the bend, taking the vehicle with it, rolling it over.

  ‘Without cutting equipment we need to get it upright or at least onto its side before we can get them out,’ Sam said, looking around as if help might come from an unexpected source. But the silent forest offered nothing.

  ‘The helicopter?’ Meg asked, looking towards Simon.

  ‘It could provide lift, but to turn it on that unstable ground? I don’t think so.’

  Sam was lying on his stomach, trying to see in through the windscreen, talking to the man who was trapped but conscious.

  Then Meg heard his words and remembered he’d often worked holidays with timber cutters.

  ‘They always have a bulldozer to push tracks and bring the trees out. It’s up the road. I’ll get it. In the meantime, keep back. The sand’s still unstable and the vehicle could topple further.’

  ‘Maybe we could topple it so it turned right way up,’ Meg suggested as Sam began to move away from them.

  ‘Have a better look! Maybe it would topple right into the lake if we moved it at all without first securing it to something,’ he said, then he jogged off, although she wasn’t at all happy at the thought of Sam driving a bulldozer.

  What if another bit of road gave way?

  What if he was trapped beneath such a huge hunk of machinery?

  Don’t think about it, she told herself as Simon settled on an old log near the ute and talked quietly to the man or men inside it. Then a rumbling, grinding noise grew louder and Sam appeared, stopping the ugly big machine before the place where the road gave way and leaping out, then unwinding chains from the front of it.

  ‘I don’t want to pull it while it’s still upside down in case we cause even more injury to those inside, so we’ll attach these to the far wheels and see if pulling on them will turn it on its side. It won’t be stable but as long as the chains hold, the bulldozer’s weight will keep it in place while we get those poor beggars out.’

  He passed the end of one of the chains to Simon and indicated where to put it, while Meg shifted the backpacks a little distance away and began to open them up and lay out what they’d need. She put the two lightweight stretchers together, thinking as she did so that the helicopter would have to make two trips.

  The noise of the bulldozer’s motor starting up made her turn to see Sam raising the big blade at the front of it. As it rose, the chains connected to the vehicle slowly pulled it onto its side.

  ‘That’ll do it,’ Simon called, waving his hand in what was obviously a prearranged signal. ‘Can you find a way to hold the blade up there?’

  Apparently Sam could, and before long he joined them, helping Simon prise open the utility’s door.

  ‘Should have tipped it on its other side,’ a faint voice said, and Meg had to smile that at least one of the injured men had retained his sense of humour. The man closest to them, the unconscious driver, must have weighed close to twenty stone. He was massive! And now most of his weight was flopped against his unfortunate colleagues.

  Sam moved in close, checking that he was breathing, feeling for a pulse, talking to the man but getting no response. But his reflexes showed spinal damage was unlikely so, once they’d secured his neck in a brace, they decided they could lift him out.

&n
bsp; ‘You and what army?’ Simon asked, when Sam made this announcement.

  ‘All three of us,’ Sam said. ‘Meg, you’ll have to pull at his legs while Simon and I manoeuvre his body. Simon, if we drop him, we drop him. The other two are losing blood—we can’t delay any longer.’

  But, like most things, it was easier said than done. Meg tugged one leg free and then the other, but the two men had a much harder job, getting the man’s great belly out from behind the steering-wheel. In the end, Sam pulled off his shirt and twisted it to form a rope, then, using it as a kind of sling, they were able to ease the man off his companions.

  Eventually they had him on the ground, and dragged him far enough away to allow them access to the front seat and the other patients.

  ‘Check him out, Meg,’ Sam told her. ‘Simon, let’s lift this other fellow out, then I’ll go in and look at the last one.’

  Meg checked the big man—airway clear, breathing OK, no bleeding, pulse strong—then she felt around his head, finding a swelling behind his ear. His bulk had stopped him falling forward into the windscreen when the car had tipped over, but he must have slammed his head against the side window. She looked more closely at it. Was there a depression in the centre of the swelling? Linear fracture? With blood matting his hair it was hard to tell—though a skull X-ray would soon show any damage to the bone.

  Assuming it was fracture, epidural haematoma was the most obvious thing to look for, but without a scan who could tell?

  She lifted one eyelid and then the other. His pupils contracted evenly, relieving her anxiety that there might be pressure already building in his head, causing potential damage to his brain. There was no clear fluid leaking from his nose or ears, but assessing brain injury in the field was largely guesswork. He needed hospitalisation—and soon.

  ‘He OK?’

  She turned to see Sam and Simon bending to lower the second man onto the stretcher behind her.

  ‘Swelling behind right ear—possible skull fracture, linear not comminuted. Temporal bone-haematoma is more likely there, isn’t it?’